Thursday, May 1, 2014

The Beginning of My Love For Comics



If you’ve spent much time at all on 3twins.net then you know that our love of comics is evident in much of the work that we do. I personally grew up loving comic book characters, especially Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man, but my experience with them was entirely through movies and cartoons. Even though I loved the stories, I never actually read the comics.

At least that was the case up until the summer of 1997. I was shopping with my brother and sisters, happened to see a four-pack of Spider-Man comics, and bought them on a whim. This was my very first comic book purchase! That four pack was known as the Revelations series, which was the conclusion to the Spider-Man Clone Saga – a story-arc that dominated the franchise from 1994-1996.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the Clone Saga is considered one of the lowest points in the history of the Spider-Man franchise. It was full of messy storytelling and plot-lines that angered hard-core fans and confused new readers by phasing out Peter Parker and establishing Ben Reilly as the new Spider-Man. Writer Bud Budiansky was tasked with bringing Peter Parker back and ending the saga, but it was no easy task because of all of the loose ends and other problems that had been created. Budiansky ended up soliciting ideas from the entire Marvel staff and Revelations was the final product of his efforts. The final comic in the series saw the death of Ben Reilly and end of the clone saga, the first appearance of Norman Osborne and the Green Goblin in 20 years, the disappearance of Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s baby, and Parker reestablished as Spider-Man.

I spent the rest of the weekend completely lost in those four issues. My love of Spider-man was officially solidified and my love of comics was born. I never did become a comic book collector, but to this day I still enjoy reading them and getting swept up in the images. And if you peruse some of the drawings I’ve done for 3Twins, especially in Hatman & Indigo, you might even see how the Revelations story-arc influenced my own artwork.

Until next time,

~Steve

3 comments:

  1. I remember borrowing those from you when we were in High School! You also loaned me an X-Men book that featured Wolverine with bone claws. That 4-parter was the first Marvel story I actually read. Before that, I had only really read Archie and TMNT (the Archie version). Though it wasn't until 2003 that I really got into comics. Chuck got me interested in Fantastic Four and I went out and bought my first FF book and was hooked!

    I read Marvel exclusively till about late 2009 and comics just got too expensive for me to buy like 30 books a month. Since then, I've mostly just collected Batman Trade Paperbacks, really getting into the classic "penultimate" Batman stories.

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  2. I actually like how some people like different versions or writers for the same characters because it gets people talking. Michael and I discuss how I grew up with the movie "Buffy" and how that is way off from the writer's actual intent with the film so they created the tv series and comic books!
    ~Michelle

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    1. Michelle,

      Diversity is awesome! That's why we always welcome fan feedback at 3twins.net!

      ~Andy

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